Investigation into Cadillac man's death re-opened after change in cause of death

by Brendan Kinney

Originally, the cause of death for James Wesley Strobel, 30, was determined to be suicide, but the medical examiner has now changed the likely cause of death to "undetermined."

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:50:29 GMT —

The investigation into a Cadillac man's death has been re-opened after the medical examiner changed the cause of death.

Originally, the cause of death for James Wesley Strobel, 30, was determined to be suicide, but the medical examiner has now changed the likely cause of death to "undetermined."

Strobel was reported missing in July of 2013 and was found in September by a woman and her nephew who were walking near the Whitepine Trail near Lansing Street.

The medical examiner says Strobel's mother, Michelle, shared new information with him about her son's death in January.

"She asked about some things that she had heard about and to put her mind at ease I decided that I would contact the forensic pathologist over at Sparrow Hospital who did the autopsy," said Dr. Fred Wreford, Wexford County Medical Examiner. "We decided the autopsy could neither confirm nor deny that information."

The medical examiner and Cadillac police are not releasing what information Strobel shared with them.

â??It's just simply a procedural manner to sit down and say okay, we're leaving this open. If something does develop in the future then we can come back and revisit it.â??

Cadillac police are now looking into the new information.

"In light of this new information it would be the responsible thing is to track it down and see what kind of validity there is to it, and make sure there isn't circumstances that we weren't able to verify in our original investigation,â?? said Cadillac Police Lt. Todd Golnick.

A Cadillac police officer has been assigned to the case. The investigation has been on-going on a full-time basis for the past two weeks.

â??Determining the manner and cause of death is part of our job. We take it very serious and we want to get it right. We work with a lot of different people to do that, and that's just exactly what's going on right now."

Lieutenant Golnick says he does not yet know how long their investigation will last.